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Alexander Raskatov’s “A White Night’s Dream” in the USA

In response to a commission from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ferrara Musica and Ars Musica Brussels, the Russian composer Alexander Raskatov composed his work “A White Night’s Dream” (Hommage to Mussorgsky) for orchestra. The world premiere of the orchestral work was given on 21 September 2011 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Vladimir Jurowski at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

In addition to works by Modest Mussorgsky and Sergei Prokofiev “A White Night‘s Dream“ will be given its American premiere in a concert at the Orchestra Hall of Detroit on 4 December 2014 presented by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Andrei Boreiko.

Alexander Raskatov has supplied the following commentary on “A White Night’s Dream:”“Since many years, a volume of Mussorgsky’s letters plays for me a role of Bible as well.Mussorgsky was a great master of Word. And, as it is clear from his letters, he hate ‘musical transitions’: musical transitions as academical, school way of writing music. So, I decided to write a piece free from any transitions, piece which could be based on expositions of material, like a long chain. We can find 14 fragments, connected with different levels of perception of St Petersburg, city of Mussorgsky. The sounding ‘aura’ of the piece is based on a lot of short allusions, distantly connected with the inner world of Mussorgsky. Here there is no sense to go into details and to make a self-analysis. What was important to create a feeling of space of enormous country, as wrote Mussorgsky in one of his letters: ‘an expanse of Russian glades’. A lot of ‘ingredients’ are mixed up: bells and clocks, swampy white night and devil, church singing and holyfool, water and air as protoelements of the city.Together with Suite for bass and orchestra ‘Alphabet of death’ these 2 compositions can be united in a special triptych dedicated to the last mystery.”

Further performances at the Orchestra Hall in Detroit take place on 5 December (10:45 AM) and on 6 December 2014 (8 PM).